


Momma, We Tried

by BehindTheCellarDoor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bandits & Outlaws, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Mary is not a good mother, One-Sided Relationship, Prison Violence, You won't even notice there is destiel in here, mention of underage drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 08:33:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15837618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BehindTheCellarDoor/pseuds/BehindTheCellarDoor
Summary: Team Free Will. Three runaways turned criminals. Your usual liquor store robbery, jewelry heist, grand theft auto. They live what you would consider a good life, living on motels always on the run, their own kind of family...When that one last job goes sideways, the boys will find themselves in the big house, and it isn't prettier inside than on the streets.





	1. Welcome to Leavenworth

**Author's Note:**

> If there are inaccurate things about the prison system or criminals... then sorry, please ignore it and pretend I wrote something coherent.
> 
> Thanks to my beta CurlzForMetal, for writing a thousand comments on the sides.  
> And to my artist for this bang, who made all this great art: sandy79 - Huntress79 (AO3)/huntress79(tumblr)  
> You can find the art masterpost and leave all your love here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15848796
> 
> Finally the fic is out there and not only in my head, so that is something to smile. Get ready for some fluff and a lot of pain.

  


The cuffs felt heavy and cold on his skin, hands resting between legs pressed uncomfortably against the seat in front of him. The world moved backwards in a blur of green and yellow as the bus ran along the US-73, leaving behind fields that once had thrived and now had become deserted patches of death —much like his own life— and what seemed like forests or simply great dripping blotches of green. They were headed in the direction of the Mississippi river, towards what he could only imagine was yet another level of hell. Across the narrow aisle sat his brother looking at the other side of the landscape, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed into a thin line, so still he could have been a photograph, so still and yet he seemed to be boiling on the inside and ready to snap. Sam looked intently at him; perhaps staring would feel like a stab on Dean’s shoulder and he would be forced to look back, to look him in the eyes even for a second. But not even all the staring in the world could make him gain Dean’s attention, it couldn’t make him acknowledge he was alive, that he still had a brother. Sam turned his eyes back to the window. They were approaching an unnamed road on the left, he noticed, suddenly aware of the sweat running down his back and the cold chills that still coursed through him.

The bus rumbled down the dirt road, the brick and wire walls of the penitentiary looked back at him, tall and imposing on his right. They came to a halt a few minutes down it. The doors opened and a man as thick as that wall came in wearing a grey uniform and a frown deeper than the Mariana trench.

“Fuckin’ roadtrip’s over, ladies. Get up!,” he yelled to the other prisoners. Dean stood up at the same time that Sam did and cut in front of him, banging his shoulder against him. Sam bit the inside of his cheek while looking at the ground as he walked behind his brother, the cuffs as heavy as his eyelids. He willed himself to look up as he stepped out of the bus and into a hallway that was more of a cage. His shoes dragged on the dirt as they lead the men to a room and forced them out of their clothes and —after a most humiliating procedure— into an orange jumpsuit with a number on the left, right over his heart. That is what they were now. A number. Nonexistent. Just another statistic.

“Aren’t you going to invite me to dinner first?” he heard Dean say in his sarcastic tone as they told him to disrobe, bend over and cough. This was followed by the sound of a fist striking flesh and someone spitting. “I am not into being rough, pal.” Yeah, it definitely had been blood what his brother had spat onto the floor. Not a good way to start their time at Leavenworth, and they were going to spend a whole load of time in there…

 

The prison was like any prison you could imagine: cold, dirty, and most unwelcoming. The walls were high and made of polished concrete, the cracks on the tile floor proved that blood had been spilled in there more than once and it had now become part of the building, unable to be removed even by the toughest attempts. Through the narrow hall the sounds of aggressive chatter and disruptions echoed from somewhere deeper in the penitentiary. They walked in silence, some with their heads down, others –like Dean– sporting their recently split lips with a mocking pride, already seeping into the cracks, pretending this wasn’t a punishment, but a paid vacation.

 

They stopped in front of one the doors leading to the cell blocks. A tall, mean looking officer, dark skinned and of a tough complexion dressed with an impeccable khaki uniform stood before them with a clipboard and a very expensive looking pen. When he talked, he did it in the most monotonous tone and yet there were definite hints of power and something else in his voice.

 

“We will be dividing you into different blocks, procuring the safety of the rest of the inmates and society. Your time here will not be easy, gentlemen; don’t expect any kind treatment, don’t expect anything above what disgusting mud monkeys like you deserve.” He looked directly at Dean, who was smiling widely with his busted lip swollen and dried blood resting on his chin. The officer frowned almost imperceptibly before he continued.

 

“If you understand your place in this institution, and respect the rules…then maybe you will make most of your stay. Am I understood?”

 

“Aye aye, Captain.” Dean again, loudly.

 

“Shut up, asshole. You are gonna get us all in trouble,” whispered a guy behind Dean.

 

“You’ll excuse me, sir,” said Dean, looking down to read the name tag the guard wore on his shirt. Raphael. Dean grinned. “I just don’t like being lectured by a ninja turtle.”

 

And just like that his lower lip was now symmetric.

 

“For your sake, I would stay quiet, Mr. Winchester,” said the officer with a menacing look, producing a white handkerchief from his back pocket to wipe the blood from his knuckles. He checked his clipboard and his mouth slightly curled, whether it was in disgust or in joy, it was pretty damn hard to tell. “I guess it is your lucky day,” he said, looking at Dean “you have been assigned to Block A. For security reasons you and your brother will be put in separate blocks. He will be in Block C, which I am in charge of.” This time the lip curl was definitely a smile.

 

Dean clenched his fists visibly, his nails digging into the palms of his hands, trying to keep his smirk on except it now looked like more like a snarl. He eventually dropped the face and stared blankly at the door behind the officer while he read the other inmates their assigned blocks. Sam looked around the room as the guard spoke, trying to remember the last names of the few other inmates that were going into his block; just two more, to be precise. Most were going to Block A or B, the latter under the charge of one officer Singer.

 

The guard slipped a card through a reader near the door and a loud buzz greeted them as it unlocked.

 

The door opened to reveal an even more bleak inside; a great rectangular hall completely empty except for a central desk with two guards sitting lazily in front of a bunch of different monitors that Dean could only imagine belonged to all the areas of the prison. Would they have cameras in the showers too? Probably. Around the walls were several cell-like doors opening to brightly lit halls, dim rooms, and more buzzing doors. The shouts and quarrels coming from them echoed in the high ceiling of the main room, ominous calls that sent a shock of electricity down the Winchesters’ spines.

A female guard with her hair pulled neatly in a bun standing next to Raphael smiled.

“Welcome to Leavenworth, boys.”

 

Block A turned out to be a two level hall with at least fifteen cells per side, amounting to approximately sixty cells, two inmates per cell. Two guards in each floor, and the supervisor of the block. The prison system was a fuckin’ mess. Five people to care for almost one hundred and twenty prisoners in one block? No shit there were constant murders and shankings in the penitentiary.

 

They had led them to their respective blocks and he was first greeted by a tall man –one or two inches shorter than him, but still very tall– with olive skin, well shaved and a pair of deep blue eyes. From the moment Dean saw the man, he knew he was going to be a problem. Those eyes were the eyes of someone who had seen blood run, of someone who had been responsible of spilling blood; old eyes in the face of a man in his thirties. In those eyes he saw the rage of his father, and that was enough for Dean to immediately take a dislike to the guard.

 

“This is how things will work,” he said, stoic, “morning roll-call is at five a.m. and you are required to be up by then and ready to be counted. Breakfast will be served in your cell, and then work starts at six for most of you. You will be assigned a job, or an educational program, by the warden. Lunch at noon, after one p.m. you have free time for studying, recreation, and similar activities.” The guard searched their faces, eyes squinted, stopping one moment at Dean before continuing. “If your assigned work requires you to go back after recreation time, you will do so. Dinner is served at five, and lights go out at six thirty.” He put his hands behind him and cocked his head down. “You will behave, you will listen and obey and don’t ask questions when ordered to do something, be it by me or any other correctional officer. Do you have any question as of now?”

 

“Yeah, do you have a jacuzzi in here? ‘Cause my back is killing me and I have a headache from all of you guys ranting,” said Dean smugly.

 

The officer walked towards the end of the line, opening the space. He squinted his eyes and tilted his head to the side, now staring directly at Dean. His eye stopped over his busted lips for a moment and then at the number over his chest.

 

“Do you think you are funny?”

 

“I think I’m adorable.” He smiled defiantly.

 

The guard walked closer to him, invading his personal space, and checked the board on his hands trying to put a name to the face and number. He nodded once and looked back at Dean, staring with his dead eyes, he backed away a couple of steps letting Dean breathe before he delivered a solid punch into his stomach.

 

“I will not tolerate that kind of behavior, Mr. Winchester,” he said holding him by the shoulder and then turned to the rest of the new inmates. “Let this be a warning for all of you.”

 

They were assigned cells. All in for different crimes, all claiming to be innocent; everyone pleads innocent. … what point was there denying?

 

Dean tumbled into the cell and placed the little clothes and things they had given him on the bottom bunk that was thankfully empty. The grey cubicle had a small horizontal opening in one wall, and an undignified toilet in a corner.

 

“Well, ain’t this just like home…” he murmured.

 

*********

 

Dean sat on one of the beds of their dirty motel room carefully cleaning his gun, taking it apart and putting it back together with the precision of a surgeon and the delicacy of a father; he had turned twenty one not long ago. Sam watched from a chair across the room and next to the window as his brother placed the gun with the white handle and the embossed barrel over a piece of cloth and proceeded to do the same with a simpler, less beautiful revolver. Sam smiled to himself, a warm smile that for the moment it lasted was able to make his shakes and shivers go away, a smile that was barely visible in his lips but that had come from deep within him and now rested on his eyes.

His brother; the one that had come to help him when he most needed it, the one that had carried him in his arms –more than one time in their lives– out of the fire and into safety. The one that made him laugh when he needed to, and also the one that made him angry and pissed and now a criminal in the eyes of the law.

Dean put the last gun aside carefully next to the others and looked up at him, his calm face turning into a mask filled with seriousness and a tint of fear.

 

“How are you feeling? Is the drink I made you helping?” he said with hints of deep worry in his voice. Worry. Never pity, never.

 

Sam looked down at the mug that he was holding and took a small sip. It tasted disgusting, and god knew what was in it, but if Dean said it would help…

   

“I don’t even know what this thing is supposed to be doing; I still feel like someone removed my organs and left some ice-cubes in their place and…” He paused, realizing his hands were trembling again.

 

Dean got up and quickly moved towards him, putting a hand over his pale and sweaty forehead.

   

“Okay Sam, finish that,” he said, pointing to the cup, “and you are going straight into that tub, man. Your fever is back and we need to bring it down ASAP. You look like death walking.”

 

“Thanks, you look great too,” he replied.

 

Dean helped him get up (and yes, his legs were giving up on him) and carried him to the bathroom, away from the cold fire that licked his skin threatening to burn him into ashes.

 

*********

 

Cas walked into the motel room carrying a white bag from the burger place around the corner and dropped it on the table. The chair was like a sweet gift for him, he thought, fishing out his hamburger and biting into it with a smile.

 

“I will never get tired of these…” he said and nodded towards Sam.

 

Sam was lying on one of the beds with his eyes fixed on a book he had taken from the last place they had been to, something that was now sort of what was expected from him. Most of the time he had to finish the books before they moved again —and they moved quite often and fast— and give them away; they took space. Now and then he kept one to read on the road, something light that wouldn’t take much space. After he was done with one Dean would pick it up for himself if it looked good, Cas would read over Sam’s shoulder when there was nothing else to do.

 

“Where is Dean?” Cas asked and took another bite, speaking now with a mouthful of a double cheeseburger. “I got him the bacon special, and there is a cheeseburger for you too. It’s gonna go cold.”

 

Sam put the book down, stretched, and knocked on the door of the bathroom, yelling at Dean to get out of the damn shower.

 

He unwrapped his burger and frowned down at it.

 

“Who forgets to put lettuce in a burger? Did you tell them to drop the greens?”

 

Cas shrugged and finished his in another bite, the back of his hand was a convenient napkin.

 

Sam rolled his eyes and started eating, he would have to deal with it like he dealt with everything else. He looked at him and nodded towards the door, Cas simply shook his head yes and sipped his coke, Sam took another bite of his lettuce-free burger.

After you spend a great part of your life with someone you no longer need words to understand what is going on. Cas had gone on foot for the food, the car was still parked outside their door, there was nothing to worry about at the moment. At least not that they had noticed. Cas reached towards the small radio and turned it on; a police scanner. The volume was down but you could still hear it, you could still be warned of anything suspicious.

 

“So, I scouted the place,” Cas started, “the schedule checks out. Two hour shifts, there is a window of around fifteen minutes between changes and the back alley is not guarded. We can park there and move towards the front, it should be pretty easy if we keep to the plan.”

 

“What about the glass?”

 

Dean came out of the bathroom on boxer briefs and a t-shirt, still drying his hair with a towel. He dropped it on the bed were Sam had been lying and walked to the table to fetch himself a burger. He unwrapped it with care and wiggled his eyebrows at the buns with a smile before looking up to his brother and Cas.

 

“What about the glass, Dean?” Cas replied with a furrowed brow.

   

“Are we talking reinforced? Bullet-proof? Your normal-ass glass?” He said as if it was obvious and took a big bite out of the bacon piece of heaven. “Fuck these are good…”

 

“The glass will not be a problem,” Sam said and cleaned his mouth with a napkin. “It is reinforced, but I got the tools we are going to need in the trunk.”

 

“What about cameras-”

 

“Dean, we did our part of the job,” Castiel interrupted before Dean went on a full check list of questions. To tell the truth there were still some small details to be taken care of but nothing to worry about; unless you were Dean. He was adamant with the details in jobs like this one. Devil’s in the details and it will bite your ass, he used to say behind the wheel of the Impala when they were on the road. Yeah, definitely the details…

 

Dean shrugged and threw himself on the bed with the towel. They had a strict rule of letting luck decide which one would have one of the beds for himself, it had been like that since they had met years back. This time Cas was the lucky motherfucker and he wasn’t below bragging and hugging the bed like a pancake whenever he didn’t get the short stick. At least luck was fair and they all eventually had their time; Dean didn’t waste his and if the motel had magic fingers… well, he was going to spend a lot of money in that little machine of bliss. But for tonight, it was bunking brothers.

 

Sam and Cas were chatting over the book Sam had been reading earlier, Cas had read the first couple of pages and wanted to know what else had happened. Dean caught the conversation and smiled. He sat up on the bed with his legs crossed.

 

“I call onto the gods and declare that tonight should be story night,” he said in a loud voice while looking at the ceiling with a most ceremonious and overly dramatic pose. Sam turned to him and Cas arched an eyebrow.

 

“Seriously, Dean?”

 

Dean shrugged and leaned back on the bed’s headrest.

 

“I don’t make the rules.”

 

Cas smiled and gave Sam a look that meant he had no escape. Sam simply sighed and motioned for Cas to sit on the other bed. This was an old tradition of him and Dean, and later when they had picked up Cas it had become a tradition for their small family. It was as simple as it was fun, on story nights one of them would tell them all about the book they were reading provided they changed the end —that was the best part. Sometimes they didn’t had books, so they would come up with something from the top of their heads. It was not really a game as much as a pass time. Something to kill the time and keep their minds in the right place. It had been at least two months since someone had called upon a story night, they had been so over their heads with this job that they had forgotten, every more the reason to do it tonight.

 

They constantly interjected to comment on whatever Sam was saying, making up stuff as they went, annoying the hell out of the kid who just wanted them to shut up so he could tell his fucking story. They did. Eventually Sam finished speaking (they applauded) and went out to the vending machine to get soda for them. Dean rested his head on the board and turned to the older guy.

 

“Are you sure everything is ready for tomorrow, Cas?” he asked.

 

Cas sighed and kicked off his pants.

 

“As ready as it is going to be, Dean. We went through it, Sam has all the plans from the shop, it is going to be a piece of cake,” he said and lifted the cover from his bed, sitting on the sheets. “…as long as our driver doesn’t get distracted, we should be in and out like a demon’s whisper.” Cas grinned.

 

“Ha ha, hilarious. That was one time and need I remind you it was the time you tried to bust the door with your shoulder and it didn’t work.”

 

“Fair.”

 

Dean looked at the door and then back at his friend.

 

“Hey, Cas?”

 

Cas looked up from a small notebook he carried around.

 

“If this time things go south… you’ll take care of Sam, right?”

 

Castiel frowned and tilted his head.

 

“Dean, don’t ask stupid questions.”

 


	2. A Shot In The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be prepared for a long chapter and some angst...

[ ](http://imgbox.com/edeyN7Hb)

Dean was up earlier that day, the chair pushed next to the window with the curtains drawn. From the side, where he sat, he could see the sun start to come up taking the grey out of the sky. He made himself a coffee that tasted like water with the small machine provided by the motel —something had to give. Sam and Castiel were still asleep, one side of Castiel’s bed empty. He looked at the older guy and sipped his drink… where would they be if it wasn’t for his help? He privately called him his guardian angel, but it was a name he only said for himself and had never escaped lips and poured into the air for everyone to hear.

 

Criminals, yes, never turned right. Maybe what they did wasn’t cool, but who was to judge them? Not to blame society or life, but at every turn of their lives they had faced nothing but injustice, it is not like it started because of the money. Or maybe it was that, when there was no money to buy a loaf of bread and peanut butter to feed your brother, what was a kid to do? Not that Dean was ever a kid, no. They had been forced to grow up fast, the Sammy sleeping in that bed in the motel was only nineteen.

 

Nothing had been the same after the fire. Four year old Dean carrying baby Sam in his arms out of the inferno that had started in the nursery. They lost their mother that day and the family they once had been was now reduced to ashes. John, a father with two kids, a dead wife, and a job that barely made ends meet; he was never around. Dean watched as their father slowly slipped into his grief and out of his job, he drank every night when he thought they were asleep, but Dean heard, Sammy heard. Sometimes the anger turned to the outside and the older brother had to step in to take the blows, John always apologized after it but he always did it again too. There were times when he wouldn’t be home for days and Sam would ask where had he gone, Dean didn’t know the answer.

 

“He went out to hunt monsters so you can sleep well at night,” he would tell him.

 

“He found a nest of vampires and he is taking care of it,” he would lie.

 

“He is looking for mom,” he would say after a day he had overheard his father talking on the phone.

 

That day he had overheard what John Winchester was actually doing instead of working when he wasn’t drinking; he was looking for Mary. Yeah, she hadn’t died in the fire, she had run off to somewhere for no apparent reason, but very much alive she was. When Dean confronted his father about their mother… well, he had a scar to prove it had been a bad idea to ask in the first place, but a handful of reasons of why she would runaway. Why without them? That he didn’t understand. One thing was sure: He didn’t think he ever wanted John to find her.

 

The years passed and the food on the table was scarce, John slipped from one job to the other but spent the money on booze and on whatever he paid to find pictures of her, what was left was never enough for Sam and Dean. Dean dropped out of school, and he dropped from the train that went to the good side of the law. At first it was stealing pieces of cars —never his father’s Impala, though, he would kill him if he attempted to sell it— and selling them to junkyards. Jacking cars for the valuables inside. Sneaking wallets at gas stations, scamming drunk adults outside of bars that wanted to bet, once or twice jumping an angry dude yelling at his girlfriend. Dean kept part of it, but most of it went to Sammy, to food and shoes for him to wear to school. Their father didn’t ask where the money was coming from, he was worried about other things and probably didn’t even notice. If it had been just the money they would have not gone anywhere, but one gets fed up with the yelling and the violence. One gets tired of the hunger, gets tired of taking the punches.

 

When Dean was seventeen he packed two bags, took out the money he had saved under his mattress, picked up the keys to the car and drove out to get Sam from school. Since then they had been on the road Sam helped as a lookout, fuck it they embraced being outside the law. Sammy learned to pick locks, Dean got a gun, they upgraded to robbing gas-n-sips and stealing at gunpoint from rich people in the nice part of whatever city they were in. But things always go south at one point or the other.

 

Castiel woke up with a groan and immediately did his bed while still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Dean had learned not to say anything about it, it was just one of those things that Cas did and couldn’t be argued about. They had learned to live with their quirks and strange habits. He was almost two years older than Dean but the shortest of the three of them. His hair was dark brown —the color of Sam’s eyes— and currently incredibly messy, he didn’t smile much but when he did it was one of those smiles that cure diseases. Dean didn’t talk about it, they didn’t mention it at all, but when Castiel talked he tended to stare into his eyes, too blue; one time he had asked him if they were contact lenses. Dean described his own as the color of a good romaine lettuce, which wasn’t away from the truth.

 

“Did you make more of that coffee?” Castiel asked with his raspy voice.

 

“Yeah, man. Help yourself.”

 

Cas sat down on the bed with his cup and didn’t speak until he had finished half of it.

 

“We are gonna have to move really soon. Did you make the package already?” Cas asked.

 

Dean pointed to the table where a small cardboard box was sealed.

 

“Drop it in the mail on our way out of town,” Dean replied.

 

“How much are you sending her?”

 

“Depends on what she does with them, but she could get at least 2k…”

 

Castiel nodded and drank his coffee. He glanced over his shoulder, Sam was still sleeping with a pillow over his head. The heist had gone smoothly, Sam had worked his computer magic thing that they didn’t really understand but knew that worked on not getting caught by cameras and alarms; he was a talented kid. When he met them, Dean had been the same age Sam was now. A nineteen year old with a muscle car in a middle of a scuffle spitting blood and punching back a guy much older than him, a tall but younger kid of long hair by his side punching another man.

 

Cas had been walking down the Interstate with nothing with him except an old trench coat, a backpack with enough to survive and four hours walking heavy on his feet. He was way out of town but still miles away from the next stop. Living on his own had never been a problem, being the youngest of a big family with no parents was not as comforting as one would expect; he was to care for himself. Maybe he wasn’t what his brothers expected, hadn’t turned out the way they wanted and they sure made it clear when they found out. He had chosen to be a wanderer, wandering away from authority mostly. Nothing terribly big, yes he had priors in a file somewhere, but nothing to big, not really. He saw the car not far from him and walked towards it hoping to catch a ride or at best get some wallets. Instead he found himself pulling out a big blade from his coat and saving the ass of the guy in the leather jacket.

After that, they had agreed to drive him to town as a thank you, the older assuring him that he had everything under control, he had just needed an extra minute to reach for his own steel. The truth is that he had saved their lives from a pair of fellow criminals that wanted a piece way too big of the cake.

 

“So, what’s your name? What’s your deal?” the tall one had asked.

 

“My name is Castiel. Novak. My deal is that you drop me off somewhere and forget what happened in exchange for me helping you.”

 

“Look, he is sassy,” the other replied. “My name is Dean Winchester. And that is my brother Sam. That’s a good deal, but I am gonna make you an offer you cannot refuse…”

 

The rest was history.

 

Every month, as soon as they got some cash or something valuable, Sam and Dean sent out some of it to a place in Lawrence, Kansas. A couple of years ago they had gotten the news through a contact that their father was dead, they chose not to mourn him. Later they had gotten a new set of news: among John’s things was an address at the name of their mother. They decided not to go. Just show up after a lifetime and tell her what? Hey mom, we are outlaws, also why did you leave us? Of course she never wrote back after the packages they sent, there was never a return address, just a piece of paper reading _We are trying. DW & SW _. Once they tried to make their way through the city and spot the house, look from the car to see if she was doing alright, if there was a trace that she was getting their help… they never stepped out of the car.

 

“So, where to now?” Castiel asked.

 

“We’ll make it up as we go.”

  


The Impala lifted some gravel as it pulled out from the main road and into a gas station. A couple of bucks to the pump number five, some chips for the trip to the other side of the Mississippi river where a promising gig waited for them. They had been driving for a couple days, taking the back roads and stopping for food on diners and gas stations like this one. Houses Of The Holy played from the speakers of the car, Cas lazily resting against the pump throwing a coin and catching it in the air. Tails.

There was always someone on their tail, or at least he felt like it. He flipped the coin again. Heads.

He thought of his oldest brother when he left a deep red mark across his face. Heads up, Castiel. Keep your head up when he talks, keep your head up and your eyes dry. He had been told to obey orders without thinking twice, his value lied in how much he succeeded. There was no option; failure meant punishment. Grades, manners, anything. One day the bruises were too many, they had gotten hard to explain, and then it had happened… they found out about his secret and gave him the literal and figurative kick; so he rebelled and left town on the back of a freight train with nothing on him. If he was going to rebel, he was going to do it full on, no failure at being a failure. There are things you simply can’t escape.

Cas tossed the coin once more and Dean caught it in his palm.

 

“Are you letting luck decide if we should put additives in the gas?” he said in that Dean kind of way of saying things.

 

Sam had gone to one of the restrooms at the back of the establishment and wasn’t back yet. Something wasn’t quite right. Dean was humming to the song, _there's an angel on my shoulder, in my hand a sword of gold,_ and didn’t notice as Castiel slipped away from the car and towards where Sam was supposed to be. Fearing something had gone wrong —nothing ever did, nothing— he turned the corner and stopped, lingering in the shadow a couple steps back. He could see Sam’s back, talking to somebody, something changing hands. Cas retraced his steps in silence, frowning at the ground, and slid into the backseat of the car.

 

A minute later Sam jumped into the front with a bag of snacks. Cas just looked at him with a tilted head as if waiting for him to speak, for him to hand over the truth. Sam lifted an eyebrow, calm outside and a sudden swarm of flies in his throat. Before any of them could speak Dean closed the door and turned on the engine. He gave the car a look-around, counted everyone and fished some chips from the snack bag.

 

“We need to be throughout with the planning this time,” Dean said, pushing towards the road again. “After all, this is a special occasion.”

 

Sam raised an eyebrow at his brother from the passenger sit.

 

“Special occasion?”

 

Dean shook his head and laughed.

 

“Dude, your fucking birthday is in like a month. Twenty one. You can finally share a beer with your elders,” Dean said and slapped Sam’s arm. “Legally, at least. If someone asks, you have never tasted alcohol, not even rubbing alcohol.”

 

Sam rolled his eyes.

 

“Okay, yeah, thank you Dean for the incredible gift of criminal activity and booze.”

 

“You are welcome.” One simple nod as he drummed on the steering wheel. “Cas, do you want to do the honors?”

 

Cas turned from where he was sitting, more like slouched against the window, and slid to the space between the two heads. He squinted at Dean and the man lifted his eyebrows in some sort of code that he didn’t pick up. The silence was getting awkward.

 

“What in the hell are you talking about, Dean?” Sam said with as much confusion as excitement.”

 

“I am talking about the damn job, Cas here is going to do the honors.”

 

Oh. Those honors. The plan, the important thing. Castiel caught the other shoe and cleared his throat ceremoniously.

 

“Sam. As your brother said, you are turning twenty one, which is a very important age to turn to,” he glanced at the rear view mirror and the lack of angry eyes from Dean in there was a sign he was doing okay. “So, we have two surprises for you. The first one is, this next job is not going to be a simple job. It is no small jewelry or liquor store. No, this is a big job to celebrate that-”

 

“Get to the point, Cas.”

 

“We are robbing a bank. A heist. No one will know it has happened until we are miles away.” Cas finished and rested back on the seat, crossing his arms with a seriousness that was almost comical.

 

Sam furrowed his brow and then his eyes opened wide. A bank. A god damned bank? They had pulled many stunts, but never something as big as this. How the hell were they planning to pull it off? What bank? When? Why? It would have been more useful if he actually worded his concerns instead of just looking back from Dean to Cas in disbelief. Dean grinned, it was better than he had pictured it going down.

 

“But that is not all, Sam. We have one last surprise. The real cherry on top.”

 

“Are we going to also dress like cat-burglars and open the safe by drawing a big ACME circle on it?”

 

Castiel leaned in with his head between his hands.

 

“That is actually an interesting idea…”

 

Sam just looked at Dean demanding an explanation, he was not going to be running around with a sack of money with a dollar signed painted on it. Not today, Satan, not today. In his mind a thousand scenarios were starting to be drawn as clear as the books he read. The vault was in the 20th floor of a high security building. It was the biggest bank in the USA. There was dynamite involved. They were breaking into the white house.

 

“We are retiring,” Dean said and took his eyes from the empty road to look at Sam.

 

Sam blinked, letting it sink in.

 

“Retiring?”

 

“He means to say this is our last job, Sam.”

 

“Yeah, I think I got that… but…”

 

Dean reached an arm to tussle Sam’s hair. They were doing it… they were leaving it behind once and for all.

He and Cas had been talking, they took turns to deposit a big cut of their own earnings in a bunker they had found in Lebanon, Kansas. A retirement fund. They had been sitting in the back of the Impala after several drinks —Sam asked for time alone in the motel with a girl he met— when the idea came to Dean.

 

“Cas, buddy… we can’t keep doing this forever,” he had said, his feet on Cas’ lap and his head against the window. “I don’t want to be a criminal all my life. It is fun, sure, but… I sometimes want a normal life, you know? I want Sammy to get his GED, to go to college. He is still young, he is recovered, he has been through a lot.”

 

Cas mostly listened in silence like he used to, he let Dean speak for as long as he needed, nodding. It was pretty hard to get him drunk, so at that point he was fairly sober. He had reached for Dean’s hand and squeezed it.

 

“We can try.”

 

Dean looked at him with suspicion, squinting and gouging if he was just pulling his leg.

 

“We can try, Dean. We save enough money from the jobs, I know a place in the woods of Maine where we could build us a home. Get new identities, find a way for Sam to study. We can try.”

 

Dean smiled and squeezed his hand, his chest felt tight.

 

“The three of us against the world.”

  


Now Sam simply stared at both of them.

 

“And after that? We simply go into hiding for the next forty years or so?”

 

“Come on, Sam. We have it all planned. You are going to be retiring at twenty, you lucky bastard! Where are my platitudes? After this we are going to get another chance at life.”

 

Sam choked a fit of laughter.

 

“Platitudes, Dean? I don’t think that word means what you think it means”

 

“It does not,” remarked Castiel.

 

“Okay, whatever, you got my point. At least a _Thank you my dear older brother better at everything and thanks Cas who is an overall cool guy,_ ” he said half joking.

 

Cool.

 

Sam thanked them and mocked Dean further, Cas joining in, hiding the nervousness perfectly well as he surreptitiously clutched the small plastic bag in his pocket. He would have to stretch it out, and after the job was done and they started moving towards whatever kind of new life they were picturing, he would go cold turkey again. He had done it once, he could do it again. It had been a slip, he could get back up. He just needed to get by for the next couple of days. Do the job.

 

Castiel put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and looked at him with a softness in his eyes, a complicit stare.

 

“It is going to be okay,” he said in a plain voice and didn’t blink until Sam nodded; he nodded back before returning to his place on the window.

 

Dean turned up the volume and Kashmir drowned out the anxiety from Sam’s mind. Just one more for the road… they had his back.

 

*********

 

Leavenworth had turned out to be exactly what Sam expected, except worse. The halls were overcrowded and the air was heavy and still, from the moment he got a cell assigned he knew it was going to be a tough time. It was a damp small room with only a barred window on the door. The concrete walls were scratched with names, lines counting days —he supposed— and symbols he wasn’t sure what they meant; if they were gang related he had no clue, that was not his scene. Or at least it hadn’t been his scene until he arrived. You see, once you enter you are told to find a gang and to stick to your race, that is simply how it works if you want to stay alive and even then nothing is certain. They threw him alone in there, no one to talk to which he guessed was sort of a blessing among all things terrible, the food was disgusting, the whole time he could feel his heart racing with a mix of fear and anguish.

 

They are not your friends, stick to doing your time, Sam would think to himself as he paced the yard the first days trying to settle in. During the first week in Leavenworth he had not seen his brother once. During that first week, one day during recreation time when he was sitting by himself with his back to the wall, a group of buff men approached him to ask what his business was. Sam ignored them. A mistake.

Before he could make tails or heads of what was happening they were over him with punches and kicking, he knew if he let this slide he was good as dead either way. He connected a solid punch to one of the guy’s jaw and then another to the next’s stomach. There was no order, no rules, nothing but pure chaotic violence. He was bloody, they were bloody too. The fight broke before any guard could intervene, and the one who had incited the fight reached out his hand and shook Sam’s with a firm grasp.

 

“You seemed like a pushover… guess you are not.” And without saying anything much they left him to tend to his wounds.

 

The second week Dean was nowhere to be found. Sam realized soon enough that you had to ask permission for everything, not run your mouth off, he wondered with a pang of hurt in his stomach if Dean had wised up with a guard. He walked the crowded cafeteria until he ran into the gang that had given him his welcome beating. He looked the blond man in the eyes, sat down at their table, and ate. They said nothing until the sound that warned them to go back to their cells blasted through the halls. He was asked his name and the man introduced himself as The Trickster, no questions asked. Sam noticed the tattoos on his arms, one of them looked like a pair of wings. They were going to keep an eye on him, they told him to be careful, to watch his back, to give them money for phone calls. Sam said thanks and yes and thought to himself that it was better than getting stabbed with a razor stuck on the end of a toothbrush.

 

A month went by until he saw Dean, he walked into the yard with a blank expression and a scar above his lip. He strutted like he owned the place, like it was his own home and everyone else were uninvited guests. He caught him moving to where the weights were and immediately laid down to lift. Sam didn’t approach him but his stomach turned remembering how he had felt during the ride to prison, how Dean had yelled at him while they waited to be transported from county jail, how they hadn’t talked in such a long time. It hurt to see his brother. Period.

 

When you are inside you count the days, the hours, you are between the walls. Every moment you have to be alert, you sleep with one eye open. It had been in a day when the sun was high in the sky and burning their skin when The Trickster asked him the inevitable: what you in for?

Sam told him his story with scarce detail, jumping over the nasty parts, the unsavory moments, all up to his arrest. When he finished talking a small silence passed between the two of them and then the Trickster punched him hard in the face, knocking him back from the bench. He helped him get back up with a strange laugh and shook his head.

 

“Won’t you look at that… we suddenly have a bit in common. That’s how they brought me here too, kinda,” he started and sucked on the ever present smuggled lollipop. “Except I was innocent.” Sam laughed but the man didn’t laugh with him.

 

“I know how everybody says they are, but you know what? A great majority are telling the truth. I wasn’t framed, it was more of a… cops doing a shitty job, having a bad attorney, bad luck, and some shit circumstances.”

 

“What did they charge you with?” Sam asked.

   

“First degree murder. My mother. I didn’t do it and even though I have a good idea of who did, it is shit for me… you enter innocent and they turn you into an actual murderer, you know?

 

“I was given 25 to life for that charge, the innocent one, I refused to plead guilty on a fucking deal they got me. I hadn't done it, I was not going to say I was.” He paused and took the lollipop out. “But you see how it is here, Sam, you gotta stay alive, and for me that meant I had to kill a guy that was playing dirty with the gang I joined when I got here. That shit adds to your sentence, and I spent a year in solitary. You don’t want to end up there.” He finished.

 

Sam nodded and looked at the man. He looked older than Cas but he couldn’t quite place how old. He had tired eyes. The next week they caught him in the bathroom and shoved him into a nearby room; that was the day he got his first tattoo. He had been inside for three months and he hadn’t spoken to Dean yet, he worked out in silence and undisturbed, and he ate alone during the day.

 

Don’t taunt the guards. That had been his first lesson in prison; they will find any possible reason to beat you up. By the end of the first day his lip was busted. Make sure they know not to mess with you; that had been his second lesson. Sometimes one trumped the other, and so at the end of the first day he had fought back one of the correctional officers and busted his lip and nose. The other inmates cheered as he beat the blue out of the stuck up guard, and he walked with a cocky grin as they took him to solitary. “Name is Winchester, boys, save me the top bunk!” He yelled before they closed the door of the hall. He was thrown into a cell the size of a shoebox, completely made out of concrete including the bed. No windows. Silence.

 

Dean had pictured solitary quite differently… maybe one shut cell in a hall where he could see the others through a small window, or something else. To be honest he didn’t know what was he expecting, but it wasn’t this. Twenty three hours inside the cold cell, one hour for recreation (a concrete court, alone). No human interaction. The first four days were torture, he had been expecting one or two days at most. He got lucky and was in the hole only for a month. In there, in the silence that grew so loud he could hear his heartbeat top volume, he had time to think. That is, when he could think clearly.

[](http://imgbox.com/vPtGk9GR)

The scenes of the courtroom played back in his head in a loop he could not escape. The betraying voice in the stand. The anger in his stomach. His mind went further back and he vomited for twenty minutes, the taste of bitter tears mixed with the acid from his empty stomach.

 

Once upon a time this had been a joke, ending up in a cell was nothing more than a scary tale for kids. It wasn’t something that could happen to them, no, they were family, they were untouchable, they were a team. Team free will… turned out too much free will landed you in turmoil waters.

He thought of Sam, he thought of Cas… he vomited again. He had nightmares on the days he could sleep. The day they let him out and into the damp cell in one of the normal blocks, he saw the dirty walls and sheets and thought they were a blessing.

 

    His cellmate turned out to be a fairly silent guy that only talked in his sleep and to eventually ask Dean to shut the fuck up when Dean tried to hum or sing along to a tune, the only exception was when he hummed a Pink Floyd song and the thick guy asked him to continue. Turns out fucking up a guard on your first day earns you some sort of reputation. He kept to himself, he trained, he kept to himself more, he ate the prison food and didn’t talk; when he did his voice sounded like gravel, unused. The day he came back from the hole he stuck to himself and kept in line, so to speak. He sometimes sat in his bed and thought back to when they first discovered Mary was alive, to the days it was just Sam and him, to the nights he would spend playing poker with Castiel. Then he puked again, he didn’t want to think about him. He didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.

 

    Dean saw Sam chatting with a blond guy at the yard, he said nothing and continued walking towards the weights. He lifted, and lifted, and tried not to think about his brother and how they had ended up in this mess… how _he_ had landed them both in this mess. Still, it was his little brother, and he kept an eye on him. Dean got a job inside the prison, everyone did, one would be surprised to know all the things that are made by inmates like him… no, not only license plates like in the movies. He works making nails and screws in a shop next to the yard, spends his afternoons next to the torque, it is there where he decides to make the most of his time; might as well make some more money. Shards of metal and sheets of aluminum hidden under a shirt can be traded for much during lunch and at the yard. You want to have someone on your side, Dean wanted to be that guy; an untouchable.

 

    The guard he had beat on his first week? He was back. The man in his perfectly ironed uniform and the piercing blue eyes, the chiseled chin, the hateful scowl. He paraded around the block shouting orders and hitting inmates with the ever present baton. For some reason he seemed familiar, something of his face. One night he asked his silent mate about the guard.

 

“What do you want to know?” he had replied, hanging his legs from the top bunk.

 

“You know, what’s his deal? I know every guard acts like they have a stick up their ass, but it seems this guy has it way up it.” Dean asked.

 

The man gave it some thought before answering his question.

 

“The dude’s brother got sent to jail for killing their mom, he is in one of the other blocks, they call him The Trickster. The Trickster shows up here claiming he is innocent, and his brother beats him to an inch off his life.

“He got suspended and The Trickster got sent to a state hospital for months. Then, like almost a year ago or something, his other brother got mixed up in some other shit and got killed. I don’t know about you, but I would act like I had a stick way up my ass if that shit happened to me.”

 

“That’s the most I’ve heard you talk since I got here, how do you know all this shit!?”

 

“I keep my mouth shut and listen. You should do the same thing, now go fuck off somewhere else,” he finished.

 

Dean frowned from where he leaned against the wall of their cell, it did seem like the guy had been dealt a bad hand. Maybe there could be some reasoning with him.

 

“One last thing… what’s his name?”

 

The man replied dismissively. Dean ran to the toilet in the corner and emptied his stomach.

  


The average inmate spends almost a year and a half in solitary, some people serve seventeen years in those torture chambers. Over the next couple of months he became well acquainted with them. He hadn’t tried to talk to the guard, not yet… no, to tell the truth he had tried but every attempt had been blocked by some stupid fight or another guard thinking he was stepping out of line and he ended up in solitary with a broken nose. If Dean’s count was accurate, they had been in prison for six months now. He had witnessed two shankings, and thanked Sam had found some kind of protection inside the walls. They hadn’t talked, no, Dean couldn’t go to him now, not with what he knew, not with what he still felt. He should have known by now that you can’t always get what you want, and that the universe will make sure to fuck you up even more than you already are.

 

It was a Wednesday, he knew this because he had laundry duty that day and the cafeteria was serving something that pretended to be meat but wasn’t. He was sitting at a table in silence with his back to the wall and basically a sign saying “I won’t hesitate to kill you.” As always, even though he didn’t interact with anyone except the people that came and went for trades, he still kept a quiet eye on Sammy. Now that he knew who the guy Sam spent his time with was, it seemed like he should talk to him. He was debating on that over his food when he heard a fight break on the other side of the room. If it hadn’t been because he heard it coming from the direction where Sam sat, he would have ignored it.

 

Dean dropped his plastic fork and leaped over the table. Two big bastards were fighting his brother, Sam was a tall guy and he could hold a fight, but Dean saw one of them start to reach behind his back and that was enough. He jumped on top of a nearby table and piledrived the one trying to pull out a shank. The skull of the man made a loud cracking noise against the floor as he repeatedly smashed it against the ground. _That’s my brother, motherfucker._ He didn’t stop until the other prisoners were pulling him away from the body, his uniform and hands stained red. He looked up to find Sammy, his eyes wide with horror and barely recognition of his brother.

 

“Sam…” Before Dean could say more he felt something hard connect with the back of his head, and everything went black.

 

Dean woke up in solitary again, his muscles hurting and a headache that was killing him. They fed him garbage and the guards pretended not to see that it was his time to be in the stupid tiny cement yard. He spent a month and a half in there. Just him, his thoughts, and the voice that had started to creep inside of him; being alone for so long, the conversations with yourself are suddenly no longer one sided.

  


“That was your brother?” said The Trickster taking out the lollipop from his mouth. The Trickster always had questions but not many answers, or at least not any answers he was willing to give.

 

“Yeah… that was Dean,” Sam said as he wiped the blood from the floor with a mop. His mind was faraway, in all the years they had been outside the law, Sam had never seen Dean like that. Not really. But his eyes… he had seen fire in Dean’s eyes, a fire that hadn’t been there before, a fire that reminded him of John.

 

“He always like that, kid?”

 

“No. This is new.”

 

You can enter prison an innocent man, but almost always you left it a criminal one way or another… if you ever managed to get out.

 

“My bro, he also has a nick for beating the hell out of people,” The Trickster said and then pointed to a scar on his face almost shaped like the profile of a boot. “This was one of his gifts to me… meet me at the weights tomorrow, and I’ll tell you the story, huh?”

 

Sam simply nodded, focused on mopping the blood, on making it go away. He had been shown the ropes, he had his initiation and his tattoo, but he had never been in the hole, he hadn’t needed to really worry about things going terribly south, he didn’t know everyone. Sometimes to him it seemed like he was a tourist while Dean was a native. All those months in and this was the first interaction he had with his brother, one that turned out bloody really fast, one that had saved his ass from getting a free pass out of jail in a plastic bag.

   

The next day Sam walked to the yard during their time off, The Trickster was waiting for him alone near the weights, lifting a ridiculously small kettle bell.

 

“So, what’s the story?” The other man passed Sam a couple of weights and motioned for him to do the same. They would talk while they lifted.

 

“I like you, kid. You can call me Gabe when we are not with the other clowns. Right, right, the story…” he trailed off before he continued. “I have two brothers, well three, well one. The oldest is most likely hiding somewhere in the Caribbean, we haven’t heard from him in a while… then there is my second older brother, the big douchebag, and finally the little one. He... ran away years ago.

“I got framed for killing our mom. It really wasn’t me, it was Luke, I don’t have proof except that I _know,_ ya feel? So, anyway, he runs to Mexico or something and I go on trial with a shitty lawyer because I had no money, some shit wasn’t handled like it should, I had some minor priors, and badabing I end up with a twenty five to life in the big house.”

 

Sam lifted his weights, unsure of what was the correct response for situations like these.

 

“So, this is where it gets good. I am sent here to Leavenworth, a prison where my dearest brother works. Yes, my brother works here. I think to myself, thank god I am gonna have someone on my side. INCORRECT. I come up to him one day, I think it was my first week or something, and he beats me up. I am talking hospital for a month almost dying kind of beating up. He never believed me when I said it wasn’t me. He thinks I am guilty and he is a complete asshole.”

 

“Is he a guard here?”

 

“Yeah, overlooks Block A,” the man replied, putting down his weight.

 

“That is Dean’s block…” Sam said in a low voice.

 

“Oh. That makes sense then, I heard he has been mostly in solitary all of this time.”

 

“What’s his name?” Sam asked.

 

“Correctional Officer Novak.” He didn’t even look at Sam, already moving onto something else. Sam felt his stomach turn, the pieces slowly falling into place. He held onto a metal railing, trying not to fall down.

 

“Hey, Gabe? How old did you say your younger brother was?”

  


When Dean came out of solitary he was not exactly the same. He came back to his block and the inmates looked at him differently, some of them nodded at him in complicity with something he wasn’t sure of, others glared at him. He spent the first week out in his cell, he didn’t talk, he just ate in silence and went back to his bunk as soon as he could, but people started asking for him to make deals again. He couldn’t back away at this point. But first, he had something to do. He braced himself after he spotted the guard across the block and walked towards him.

 

    “Back off, Winchester,” the officer said. “You don’t want another week in the hole, do you? I see you are becoming quite accustomed to it.”

 

    “I just want to talk… it’s about your brother,” Dean said with serious eyes, holding back any sign of emotion.

 

    Michael Novak lifted an eyebrow and looked around. He grabbed Dean’s arm, twisting it, and made some bullshit excuse that everyone could hear so he could drag him to an empty room.

 

    “What about my brother. Is he stirring up things again in here, are you snitching on him? If you know something I might be able to make sure you don’t get solitary for a while, but only if you are telling the truth and not some made up story.”

 

    “What? No. I am not talking about that brother. Your other brother,” Dean said with a frown.

 

    Michael quirked an eyebrow.

 

“Your last name is Novak, right? You are Castiel’s older brother,” Dean said looking at him directly in the eye. Truth be told Castiel had never told them much about his family, as far as they knew he had ran away from a parentless home and that was it. “He and I… we were… he was my friend. My younger brother and I, we spent these last years with him, I thought you would like to know since, you know, he didn’t keep tabs. Look, man, I know we got off the wrong foot here but I didn’t know you were Cas’ brother, we were really close but he never spoke about these stuff.”

 

    Dean waited for the guy to say something, anything, to be surprised at the very least. Dean knew Cas hadn’t kept contact with his family when he ran away and found Sam and him, so there was no way his older brother would know… Dean expected something entirely different of what he got. Michael took two steps forward, invading Dean’s personal space and looked down at him.

 

    “Oh. Now everything makes sense. I thought from the day I saw you that you had sissy painted on your face. So what, were you fucking my brother, is that what you are saying? You are one like him?”

 

    Dean was taken back by the response. He opened his mouth but no words could come out.

 

    “Castiel is-”

 

    “I know. Serves him right, I wish I had done something more than just kicking him to the curb when I found out he was doing more than _studying_ with his friends, the little freak.”

 

    “You son of a bitch!” Dean screamed and landed a solid punch on Michael’s jaw. “Castiel is your brother you motherfucker.” Another strike. “You piece of shit!” A crack when the skull hit the wall. The other guards heard and came to stop him before he killed Novak. The man looked up to him with his cold blue eyes and a smirk covered in blood.

 

    “See you in a month or two,” he said, the blood dripping from his mouth as they dragged Dean away.

  


*********

  


The time had come to face the lights, no going back, no retracing the steps back to the car. They stood beneath the shadows of the night and beneath the judgment of the stars, the last moment of peace before the storm, looking at each other trying to find in the other’s eyes the reassurance that everything would be fine, that they will come on the sunny side once more. A couple of hours of stress and then they would drive off onto the sun with loads of cash to build a completely new life in another corner of the world, to put everything behind, to pay the debts in money that they could no longer pay in action.

One last breath, one last moment of anxious innocence. One last breath of the dense night air and down go the masks to cover their faces. One last job.

 

They walked towards the building covered in darkness, the Impala parked nearby out of sight. They moved with haste to the blind spots, Castiel getting right into covering the cameras that Sam had located. Countdown starting. Dean worked on the back door, the alarms should be off by now, it cracked open and they poured inside with their guns out. The guard posted that night had just noticed a change on the monitors and distracted as he was Dean rushed behind him and covered his mouth and nose, his arm right below his chin until he passed out. Silence. The other guard wouldn’t change posts with the unconscious guy until fifteen minutes more, they had to work fast. The vault room was just beyond another door, Dean worked it and then it was Castiel’s turn to use his mojo, they would open the safes, take all they could carry, and go. The tension was rising.

 

Dean motioned for Sam to watch the monitors while he checked the cameras and helped Castiel with the lock, not that the man actually needed any help. This was his specialty, the precision jobs; the damn things talked to him or so it seemed. Dean checked his watch, they were on time, they were on time, he quickly glanced at Sam to check everything was okay, a quick glance… a quick glance was all it took.

 

Dean’s hand tensed where it was resting on Castiel’s shoulder, the other man looked up from his work confused but Dean shook his head and pressured him to go back to it. No, they couldn’t afford to lose any time. But Sam…

Dean walked over to his brother, spotting the thick beads of sweat on his brow, his hand shaking almost imperceptibly on the gun. Fuck. No. Dean grabbed his arm and looked him in the eye, Sam quirked an eyebrow but it twitched.

 

“You gotta be fucking kidding me, Sam,” Dean hissed in a whisper. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

 

“I don’t know what-”

 

“When did you get your last fix, huh?” Dean said with thinly veiled anger and something akin to disappointment.

 

Sam opened his mouth to reply when the subtle click of a lock pulled their attention. Cas looked over his shoulder with a smug smile.

 

“I told you it would be a piece of-”

 

Cas couldn’t finish his sentence. The ear grinding scream of an alarm interrupted him and any thing Sam was going to say, anything Dean would say. Cas’ eyes widened and he got up like a bolt. Dean let out a fuck in a sharp breath and handed Sam the big canvas bag.

 

“Take all you can, we will take care of this,” he said and called for Castiel. Sam shook his head clear and entered the vault.

 

The guard was running towards them and stopped when he saw the two masked men standing next to his unconscious partner. His hand went to his gun but Dean was faster.

 

“Don’t fucking move. You move and you are dead,” Dean yelled, bluffed. He had never killed anyone and he wasn’t planning on starting.

 

The guard pulled the hammer and Dean shot at his arm. The man dropped the gun in a yelp of pain.

 

“Do I look like I am joking?!” A non-lethal shot, yeah, he could live with that. “SAM, HURRY THE FUCK UP!”

 

Castiel walked to the guard clutching his arm on the floor and took his gun, then he turned to Dean.

 

“Dean. I don’t know what happened, we went over it, the alarm should have been deactivated,” he said in a hurry with a look of disbelief on his face. Yes, the alarm should have been deactivated, yes they shouldn’t be hearing the sound of patrol cars in the distance, yes there shouldn’t be a shot guard bleeding all over the tile. They should be laughing in the car with their retirement money. Sam should not be sweating and twitching.

 

“We will take care of this, Cas,” he said and held him by the shoulders. “Just like we have taken care of everything before, okay?”

 

Sam was struggling with the safes, they took the gun from the knocked out man and tried to fill as many bags as they could, let it not be in vain. They could still make it.

 

“I checked the interface, it was deactivated…” Sam said, almost like he was saying it for himself. “The system was off… I checked.” He repeated. Dean looked at him, trying to believe, trying to swat away from his head the other possible reason.

 

“I am sure you did.” It was intended to sound reassuring, but it came out angry and void.

 

Sam blinked fast and took a step back while his brother and his friend helped with the money. They slung the bags on their shoulders and rushed out of the vault room, Cas squeezed Sam’s arm in their way, a soft it will be fine spoken into his ear in the rough voice of the older guy.

 

_It will be fine._

 

The front glass doors shattered.

 

“Freeze! Put down your weapons, NOW!”

 

Cops. Fucking cops entering the building with bigger guns and in bigger numbers. The whole escaping unnoticed was a notion of the past, a fever dream. They were going to end with blood on their hands and names, it was plan fucking B from now on. Balls to the wall and running only on their need to stay alive and together. Only them against the world like it had always been. Like it was meant to be.

 

Dean pulled his gun and took a shot at one of the officers, not thinking twice; it was them or the people he loved. A second later the bullets started flying from one side to the other, desks overturned as trenches to protect themselves from the fire. Outgunned.

 

“It has to be now, guys,” Sam said, ducking behind a big mahogany desk after shooting at someone.

 

“I will back you up. Sam, take the money, Dean you know the escape route.”

 

They started to make their way back between the explosions and whistles of the projectiles that crossed close to their ears. Sam fired again and one of the others went down. Down. Then another, and another. A shot graced Dean’s arm, drawing blood and ripping his jacket. He cursed.

 

“Move! Move!” Cas yelled back when he saw Dean clench his arm.

 

Almost there. They made their way back, back, back to the door, back to the car, out of there. The cold air hit them as they spilled out of the bank and ran towards the car. Dean was laughing, a few steps away from the Impala. We made it, fuck we made it.

 

“That is gonna leave a scar,” Cas pointed about Dean’s bleeding limb as they reached the car. Dean turned around with a smirk, his hand on the door handle.

 

Click. Boom.

 

Then the world got very still for a second.

 

Castiel’s eyes shot open and a breath was pushed out of him, he looked down at his shirt and then back up to Dean and Sam behind him.

 

“It’s going to be okay,” he muttered as the stain grew on his chest. He tumbled forward into the arms of his friend.

 

Everything went very fast after that. It is curious how time seems to work on its own way, devious when it comes down to it. An eternity when it should go fast and way too short when all you need is more; and yet the clock ticks the same for everyone. It ticks whether you want it or not, until your own stops; whether you want it or not. Time has no master.

 

Dean fired his gun and took down the officer, Castiel hanging on his arm. He threw the keys to Sam and opened the back door.

 

“Drive,” he yelled as he moved into the backseat with Cas bleeding next to him, already tearing his own shirt to press over Castiel’s wound. Sam didn’t need to be told twice, he jumped to the wheel, started the engine with a roar and put pedal to the metal. Dean never let him drive the Impala. Never. But there is always an exception. And as always, exceptions tend to not be pretty.

 

“It’s really cold…” Cas whispered, a line of blood slipping out of the corner of his mouth.

 

“We need to get you to a doctor, Cas.” Dean ripped the shirt open, Castiel’s white undershirt was crimson, a hole the size of his fist on it. He put the piece of cloth back on, pressing hard on it. “Fuck. Fuck. FUCK!”

 

“Where do I drive to?!” said Sam in desperation as he made a sharp turn left. “If we go to the hospital they are going to be waiting for us there.”

 

“If we don’t go there then he will…” he stopped himself. “Just… just drive.”

 

He looked down at Castiel, at the blood on his hands, the blood spilling onto the seat, and he knew. He put more pressure on the wound, the older man’s head on his lap. He knew but he didn’t want to.

 

“We are almost there, Cas. Hang on, hang on,” Sam pleaded from the front, accelerating.

 

“Stay alive, you son of a bitch… you are not allowed to do this,” Dean said in a low voice. Cas was growing pale, a cold sweat covering him. He blinked slowly and locked eyes with Dean. “Cas, please… stay awake.”

 

Castiel simply looked at him with soft glazed eyes.

 

“We. Tried.” Blood blurted out with every word as he spoke, a grim smile on his white lips. “Dean, I-”

 

“No, don’t say it! Not like this! You are going to be okay.”

 

Cas reached for Dean’s hand and held it with the last bit of strength he had —none—, his blue eyes fading, staring beyond the green of Dean’s.

 

“Thanks.”

 

Silence.

 

They were three minutes away from the hospital when the silence came. Painful silence, the kind that has weight attached to it and kicks you right in the face.

 

“Cas. Cas, don’t,” Dean started and shook him. “CAS DON’T YOU DARE! We need you. I need you…” The last words spoken in almost a whisper.

 

Sam drove without speaking, he looked at his friend from the rear-view mirror in painful horror. Their guardian angel, gone, he could almost see the outline of wings drawn in gunpowder on the leather seat. He looked away, crying in silence, cursing in his head, anger in his stomach, his hands gripping tight the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. He drove away from the path to the hospital and turned towards the road that left the city whose name was now forever scarred and stained with blood.

He took one last look at the mirror and saw his brother crying, holding Castiel’s head on his hands with his lips pressed to the other’s forehead. He had to look away, blink away the tears and press on.

 

What could he say? What could any of them say? What can you say when a piece of you is taken away too soon? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Words fail to describe the taste of a broken feeling.

 

The sound of the wheels leaving the pavement and hitting the gravel of a back road accompanied them, both looking straight into the horizon. Dean’s teeth clenched tight, Sam’s throat stuck, and Castiel’s tender eyes closed.


	3. There’s A Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is it.

[](http://imgbox.com/JW1XZ07k)

There was a dripping sound in the cell, a leak in the roof that had started to eat at the concrete floor. Dean sat with his knees to his chest as if they could protect him from the world of empty around him. The unstopping sound of the drop hitting the pool was a nail in his temple slowly digging deeper and deeper. He had never been more alone in all of his life, and yet he was not deprived of company. Dean looked to his right, to the blonde woman sitting next to him, her legs crossed. She was not smiling. 

 

“What are you doing here?” Dean said in almost a whisper, his voice raspy.

 

“You fucked up, honey. Big time. You know that, right?” 

 

“We tried,” he replied and looked away, staring at the leak.  _ Plip plip plip. _ “You are not really here.”

 

“Am I not?” Mary stood up and squatted in front of her son. “It seems that I am very much here. Are you?”

 

Dean turned on his side to look at the wall, trying his best to ignore the figure he knew wasn’t real, that he wanted to forever forget. His knuckles bleed against the unpolished surface in front of him, trying to use the pain as an escape hatch. The silence was overwhelming. The silence had filled every pore of his being and started eating him alive. 

 

“I am still here,” she said. 

 

“Go away again. Go away like you left us, thinking you were dead for years having to live with a man that was so obsessed with finding you that he forgot about his own sons.” Dean turned around, if any one were to look inside the cell they would see a man talking to himself. “You don’t know how… how dad became. Yes we became criminals but it was that or dying, either at the hands of hunger or at the hands John Fucking Winchester.” He paused. “We tried… we tried our best.”

 

“Well it wasn’t enough.”

 

“I know.” His voice was almost a whisper now. 

 

A guard walked by and hit the metal door with a baton.  _ Shut up in there! _ He still had two more weeks of his own personal hell, the perfect cage inside his head. The voice, the guilt, and the fucking leak in the corner. 

  
  


Sam looked at Gabriel with a concerned look in his eyes, the other man lifted an eyebrow. You cannot trust anyone in prison, why would he trust the kid with the name of his little brother? Then again, he had already told him his goddamn life story with Michael and Luke, might as well share that too. 

 

“He should be around his late twenties right now. Why?”

 

“Was his name Castiel?”

 

Gabriel took a step forward, a frown suddenly marking his expression. The air got heavy, dense, it was as if the sun had decided to stop throwing light on the spot they were standing. They say sadness is blue, but whatever this was —and it wasn’t happiness— was amber colored.

 

“You know Castiel?”

 

How do you tell someone their brother is gone? How do you tell someone you saw the light escape their eyes, that you had to wipe their blood from your hands? Sam took a sharp breath and sat down in one of the weight benches. Maybe he didn’t have to say anything, he looked down at his shoes and then up at the other man again. He got the message. Gabriel’s face fell and he sat down slowly, hands limp over his knees.

 

“What happened?” Suddenly his face was burnt with anger.

 

“Cas and I, and my brother, we were friends. We basically lived together on the road for years, Cas found us I think not long after he had ran away. We were on the same boat. Him and my brother, they were really close.” He took a moment of recollecting his thoughts before he could look up to Gabriel again. “He was shot by a cop, but we killed him and others on our way too… that is why we are here —mostly.”

 

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at him, studying him, but he found no lie in his face and nodded. So he was dead. He was dead and he hadn’t known a single thing about him for such a long time. Not a chance to say goodbye.

 

“Was he happy?”

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Yeah, Castiel. Was he happy?”

 

Sam shrugged. 

 

“I would like to think so, yeah. We had a pretty good time together. He was a really nice guy, he was like family.” 

 

Gabriel took a couple of steps forward and placed his hand on Sam’s shoulder. The other man was startled, but when Gabriel spoke it was with a sort of tenderness in his voice, something like choked gratitude.

 

“Thanks, Sam.”

 

Dean spent two months in solitary. Two months were more than enough to make a person go mad. The voices, the hallucinations, the loneliness, the cold. As soon a he got out he went to look for his brother. He had to control his rage, it was bubbling under his skin, he had to breathe out and let it escape him.

 

The reunion with Sam was brief and stoic, a hug, no words, a strong single pat on the back. An unspoken  _ I am sorry. It was not your fault.  _ Forgiveness in silence, just the knowing the other was there, that things were back to normal, as normal they could be, back to the way they were when they were still out. They had been inside for a while now, a real long while, over time the things you thought that mattered suddenly don’t. You can let them fester and mold, or you can let them go, but you sure as hell need to do something with them. They shared the empty for some minutes and finally Dean broke the silence.

 

“Cas’ brother is here.”

 

“I know. He is my cellmate, I already talked to him about it, you might want to do the same.”

 

“What? No. No that is not who I meant. I am talking about one of the COs” Dean said with confusion and a tinge of hate in his voice. “The asshole that runs my block is Castiel’s brother. Cas didn’t run away from his house, Sam. He was kicked out. That fuckin’ bastard kicked him out and he-” Dean had to pause to breathe and control himself. “He said he is glad Cas is dead.”

 

Sam didn’t say anything, the concrete beneath his feet was suddenly really nice to look at, to not think about the other shit going on at the moment. He turned to look at Dean, nodding. 

“That’s why they stuck you in there, right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“We’ve made contacts, you earned respect and I think I am well standing too. What we do now is we wait. We wait and then we get out of here and bring that fucker down.” Sam was staring at a far wall as he spoke. “We take him down or we die trying.” 

 

“You have a plan?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

*******

 

They drove at the speed limit until they found a good woody place to turn the car to. They parked the Impala behind the bushes at the left of the deserted highway and carefully took out Castiel’s body from the back where he laid covered with his trench coat. His skin was pale, nothing like him, and his lips had turned a bluish shade of white, his face as serious as ever. If it wasn’t for the color you would think he was asleep. They carried him to a small clearing a good fifteen minutes away from the road, just big enough for them to do their friend justice in his burial site.

 

They hadn’t spoken a word since, driving in silence. Now, still in silence they gathered as many pieces of wood they could find to build a pyre. Castiel had told them once that when he died he wanted to go back to dust, his ashes floating away, flying, star dust; back to where it all had started. At the moment they had laughed, but now they understood. Dean had pulled a white sheet from the trunk. They wrapped his body with it ceremoniously, before covering his face Dean picked a bunch of different flowers and tucked them in his clothes —the coat was folded neatly at their feet— and over his face. They wrapped him and draped more flowers over him and a dash of salt.

Dean did the honors, the flames licking at the sides before it engulfed the body completely. They stood with their hands in their pockets, watching as the fire took with it another thing they loved, fire seemed to be a recurring theme in their lives. When it died they gathered what had been left and buried it there, placing a rock on top of it. When they went back to the car Dean closed the door but didn’t turn the engine.

[](http://imgbox.com/mnvffd32)

 

“Regretting doing something hurts less than the regret that comes from the things you failed to do…” Dean said, looking nowhere in particular. Sam looked down to his hands, they felt heavy with the burden of burying a friend. Dean had his hands on the wheel, but the keys were still hanging from his fingers. “You wait too long and then things are gone at the blink of an eye.”

 

“Dean, I am sorry,” Sam started. Dean turned to him with the same empty face he had been carrying the whole trip.

 

“It’s not your fault. I was nobody’s fault,” Dean said firmly. “Cas was… he was Cas.” It was a stupid sounding statement but not for them. He had been him until his very last breath.

 

“I am leaving it again, Dean.”

 

Dean was slowly, almost imperceptibly, shaking his head. Leave it again. So he had gone back to the drugs, after all the hours shaking and running fevers, after almost two years being sober… he had gone back. And he hadn’t even realized it until the bank, how long had he been doing it? When and where? Where had he been that had made his brother go back to it? The first time, Sam had been seventeen and angry with Dean, at one point running off; Castiel and Dean tracked him down, kid was walking on the open road. They had taken care of it. They could take care of it again.

 

“Why, Sam?”

 

“Does it matter?”

 

“It matters to me,” he said abruptly and turned to his brother. “What we just did? I don’t want to have to do that again because I didn’t pay attention to what you were doing. It’s like you have no idea, Sam, I swear. What am I going to do if you get yourself… if you do something stupid and I am not able to do anything?! It matters to me, Sam. You bet it fucking matters.”

 

Sam’s face decomposed.

 

“I just buried my best friend too, Dean. I said I am leaving it. Is that not enough?”

 

“Cas was not my-!” Dean took a deep breath and turned on the engine. “Sure, Sam, okay. Don’t tell me. That worked swell in the past.”

 

The Impala hit the road again, Dean held the wheel too tight. He turned the car and accelerated, not sure of where he was going except away from there. Sam was trying to contain himself, looking out the window. He had seen Dean angry before, but not like this. And god, he was upset too. With Dean for not believing in him, with Cas for dying, with himself for letting all happen. No, upset was not the word. Anger. What he was feeling was anger.

 

“I am sick of you doing this, Dean. I am fucking tired of you treating me as a kid. You trust me to pick locks since I was twelve and handle guns at fifteen but I am not old enough to be trusted if I say I know what I am doing?”

 

“Oh, do you, Sam? Are you not a kid?” This was not good, this was what he had been avoiding. The collision he had been keeping but that he couldn’t control anymore. “Was I the one who came into a high risk job, our last fucking job, fucking cold turkey and forgot to turn off the alarm systems? Because last time I checked it was your job to do that, we trusted you with that, just as I trusted you would stay clean.” There was no stopping it now. Pumping the breaks would be useless.

 

“So it is my fault that Cas died. If you want to say that just do it. You want to tell me it was my fault Cas died? You might as well have said I put that bullet through him!” The car was going faster, faster. Dean was no longer watching the road.

 

“We were getting out, Sam,” he yelled, his anger mixed with sadness in his voice. “We were all getting out of this mess, we had a family, we were going to send you to college. We…” he paused and turned his head to the road. Sam pressed on.

 

“And I ruined it?”

 

“No one said that. Are you even listening to what I am saying? You know what, it doesn’t matter anymore, it was just a dream. I can’t believe that stupid idiot actually believed we could get away; I can’t believe I did too.”

 

Silence. The kind of silence that comes after a train passes by in front of you, the kind of silence after a storm turns away or the alarms go off.

 

Good and bad, right or wrong, it is so damn subjective. And in people, well they are not mutually exclusive. Both Dean and Sam were right, both were kind of wrong, they had done good and bad things. They had lost so many and gained little. Now they were by themselves again, but something felt missing.

 

They arrived to a motel a few miles away from Lawrence. Dean dropped his bag on one of the beds —no need to fight over who had to share anymore— and hit the shower without a word. Sam sat down in the opposite bed and thought about what had happened. Sometimes it is not until much later that you realize what actually happened, that it really sinks in and goes beyond being some sort of strange notion to a fact. Castiel was dead, they only had each other, and that was enough for him. Still, it hurt to lose someone you had spent four years living with, seeing every single day, sharing beds and food and stories. He stared at the ceiling, there was a burnt mark over his bed.

 

Dean stood under the water, the tears rolled down in silence. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone and they had never spoken about it, just looks and smiles and something he couldn’t explain. Maybe when they had settled in that house Cas spoke about, after they retired from being criminals, maybe then he would say it with words. The complete phrase. The “I love you” that was never said, that “I love you” that Cas had tried to say with blood spilling from his mouth. It was now long lost.

  
  


They laid low for a week, on top of all their robberies now the lives of at least four cops rested on their shoulders. You toe the line and sometimes you fall to the other side abruptly. Despite the tension, they were brothers and that would never change; one would give its life for the other at the blink of an eye. For the first week they were in hiding Dean helped Sam with the withdrawals like he had once done. They drove to Lebanon, to the bunker Cas and Dean had been saving their money at. It was not a mansion but it was a pretty decent place, they had money, they had food, they could lay low quite literally. 

 

Maybe once the waters settled Dean could look up that guy Cas had mentioned, get new identities, do the whole college thing for Sam. They stayed there for a month.

 

“I want to see mom,” Sam said one day while they ate burgers Dean had made for them at the bunker’s kitchen. Dean almost choked.

 

“You want what?”

 

“We have been sending her money for years, we know where she is. I want to actually meet her, Dean. I never got to have a relationship with her,” he replied as if it was obvious.

 

Apparently it wasn’t so obvious, because Dean put down his food and walked away. The question repeated itself many times during the course of the next week, and it was repeated again when they drove through a field during Sam’s birthday.

 

“Take me to see her.”

 

“…what makes you think she will be cool with it, Sam? Twenty years later two dudes appear on her door, say hi mom it’s Sam and Dean, by the way we are the ones sending you stolen money and goods.” Dean replied, annoyed.

 

“What else do we have, Dean?”

 

“We have each other, Sam. We never needed anything else. We have lived without her, she left us.”

 

“And don’t you want to at least ask her why?”

 

Dean was silent for a long time.

 

The next day they drove to the address and parked the car on an empty lot a block away. Sam reassured him he was serious about it, that he wanted to do this, that it was a good idea. Dean nodded and they both paused at the door, waiting to see who was going to be brave enough to knock. There was still time to turn around and continue with their lives not knowing the reasons, allowing them to think whatever they wanted. She hadn’t intended to leave them, it had been a mistake, it was for their safety, whatever reason.

Sam knocked three times when he saw that Dean was blankly staring at the door, twirling his ring with his thumb. There was some rustling on the other side and a voice promising to be there in a minute. Dean turned to Sam and widened his eyes.  _ There is still time to run, we can go. Let’s go. _

The door opened and a blonde woman stood before them, shorter than both of them, looking at them as she would look at any stranger knocking, then she put one hand over her mouth.

 

“Hey… Mom.”

 

They went inside as awkward as it could have been. It was not what Sam had imagined, no warm welcome, no rushing into hugs, no tears, no I missed you. Nothing. Just an awkward invite to sit down so they could talk. Mary had remarried, there were pictures on the walls of her and a sturdy man with a ball cap and a beard. Good for her. They looked happy in the photographs, and there was nothing on sight that even suggested that she had once been a mother. After all the awkward formalities of asking how have they been doing, how tall they were now, Dean was still looking around while Sam focused on their mother. Finally he asked, Mary had been acting a little nervous since they had gotten there.

 

“Why?”

 

“Sorry?”

“Why didn’t you take us with you?”

 

Mary didn’t reply.

 

“We thought you were dead. Living with dad was…” Dean finally spoke. “Why did you leave?”

 

Mary turned in her seat uncomfortable and excused herself to the kitchen, did they want a beer? A lemonade? Coffee? Once she was gone Dean turned to his brother with an frown.

 

“I told you this was not a good idea, man.”

 

“She is going to explain everything, didn’t you want answers?”

 

“I don’t think I do anymore.”

 

Mary came back with two beers, she handed them to Sam and Dean and sat down. She looked nervous and didn’t talk, she twisted her ring in one hand with her thumb, looking at her lap. They attributed the silence to shame, it couldn’t be easy to just explain something that important, to slip back to a life she had thought buried in the fire. They were right about the shame, but they were wrong about everything else.

 

Three minutes later there were five police cars in the front lawn.

 

*******

 

It had been five years since Dean and Sam had that first chat in the yard of the prison. They had pulled in the people, built a network, created things inside the god forsaken place, gained the favor of people on the outside, of guards. From those five years, Dean had spent around a whole year in solitary, the weeks adding; Sam was luckier and only got sent there two or three times. Not all plans ever come to pass, but this wasn’t the case. 

It was a quarter past nine on a Monday when the riot started, like clockwork on every block, on every room and common area they were allowed to. Dean and Sam found themselves in the middle, nodded and moved. 

 

Michael didn’t see it coming but he should have. When the riot stopped and everyone was back in their cells, they would find his body, stabbed to death under a table. No one would say who had commited the crime, no one saw, no one knew, no one cared. No one saw the two inmates go out the front door with their civilian clothes back on, the palm of the guards properly greased with promise of more to come. In their place, the guards would found the unrecognizable bodies of two men wearing the numbers of Sam and Dean Winchester. 

 

You always leave worse than you came in, and damn it had felt good to jab those shanks into Michael, knowing what he had done, knowing Castiel would have been alive and probably never retorted to crime if it wasn’t for a bigoted brother that couldn't accept anything different than what he expected. It had felt so right to walk out washing their hands. It had felt so right and at the same time it wasn’t something that would hang light over them.

 

They left on foot, they walked east towards the Mississippi until they found a place to stay, until they found a way to get back to their home, to Baby, and to the place where they had burned the body of their best friend to share one last drink with him.

 

It took them some time, but finally they reached the place with a carton of beers between them, the Impala back with them; their one true home.It had taken to a junkyard and they bought it back with the money from the bunker, no questions asked. 

 

They sat on the ground where the dirt had been scorched years back, Sam opened the bottle and drop half of it over the soil, letting it suck the alcohol. They drank.

 

“Sam, I never got a chance to tell him, and I didn’t tell you either, but-”

 

“You don’t have to say it.”

 

“But I want to. I loved him.” The last part was said with confidence, there was no need for secrets, for hiding more things than they were needed. 

 

They let a silence pass between them, it was a peaceful silence. Dean didn’t really have to say it, and Sam knew he loved Cas too albeit in a different way than Dean did. The idea of getting out and retiring and moving into a cabin in the woods, just the three of them, of going to college, it seemed like a fantasy now. Not that it ever stand a real chance of being. Now they were dead men but maybe they still had a chance.

 

“What do we do now?” Dean asked.

 

“I have no clue.”

What  _ do _ you do after spending years in prison, what do you do after having your heart ripped out multiple times from you chest, after being chased by voices in closed and damp cells, after shaking with withdrawals, after having nothing to turn to anymore. They were out, yeah, they avenged Castiel’s death. They had done their part. They had stood in court, their mother —who didn’t deserve the title— bringing them in and testifying against them with all those pictures of the packages they had sent over the years. They had been to hell and back.

 

The world felt different somehow, really different, it had moved since the last time they had breathed fresh air. Sam raised another bottle of beer to his lips.

 

“We tried…” Dean said as he looked at the sky and finished his drink. 

 

Sam looked at his brother with somewhat of a smile on his lips.

 

“What is stopping us from keeping that up?”

 

They spent the night in that field. There was still that place in Maine, between the trees —the one Cas had dreamt of— waiting for them. They could always try, after all they didn’t have much to lose anymore. 

[](http://imgbox.com/cjVGkSQa)


End file.
